began enacting this dream. By extending ourselves as
enrichments for one another, we came to experience,
through the mystery of improvised movement and
drama, a special quality of togetherness. A form of
communion occurred, more tangible and direct than the
most intense of our group meditation experiences.
      Was this happening a fluke? To find out, at the
community session that following summer I asked that
we be on the lookout for dreams about the session itself
which we might enjoy enacting. Two such dreams
occurred. Being somewhat more mindful of the process,
we allowed ample time for the dream enactments to
unfold. We dressed up for each occasion. We had music
to accompany our drama. We approached the enact-
ments as we might a sacred ceremony or celebration.
Again these enactments proved to be powerful
communion experiences for the community. They also
provided us with a "mythology," a shared symbolic story
that gave meaning to the sometimes painful process of
working together on a common ideal.
      I am reminded of the story in Black Elk Speaks, where
the tribe enacts the young Black Elk's visionary
experience. Not that our community dream enactments
were as momentous. Our enactments were not of sacred
visions, but of rather simple dreams about the
community. Yet the magical quality of the enactment
experience was reminiscent of what Black Elk described.
What the two situations may have in common is the
process of a community giving life to a symbolic program
revealed by the unconscious in an attempt to experience
in practice a possibly creative pattern of energy.
      Our community dream ceremonies led me to believe
that just as a single individual can seek to incubate a
dream that will resolve a personal conflict, so can a
community prepare itself to have a dream that will move
the community as a whole closer to its ideals. What
might be an appropriate community method for
incubating such a dream? Quite appropriately, the
search itself for such a method has been furthered by the
contribution of many individuals.

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